From Indian Lakes has been largely under-appreciated for their career, so it’s nice to see some renewed buzz for their excellent new album, Head Void. It’s just solid indie rock with hints of shoegaze and dream pop, and it translated well live for this headlining tour they’re out on.
I missed opener Dirt Buyer, who’s supporting FIL on this tour, in part simply because this show ran surprisingly early. In fact, the moment I walked in, From Indian Lakes started running their background projection video and went into their first song; the timing couldn’t have been better.
They actually opened the set by playing the entirety of Head Void here, and they sounded like the most natural of all the performed songs here; granted, I may have a recency bias since I’ve listened to a lot since it came out a month ago, and much less of FIL’s catalog lately. They were pretty true to the studio versions and you could tell they’d rehearsed these thoroughly.
With a seemingly strict 9:00 curfew in the distance, they barely let up, blasting through six songs before a short pause, and then another 10 before stopping at all. Meanwhile, their video projector set a moody background, playing a footage mix of ocean waves, national park forests, deserts, dams, and traffic.
The crowd packed into this small room overseen by Berklee College of Music was warm and receptive yet polite, singing along to most songs (including lots of the new stuff) and getting louder for the older stuff when FIL used the back-half of the set to showcase some vintage staples. Admittedly, it felt a little more fan service than a passionate replaying at times — the repetitive title melody of “Breaking My Bones” was more of a muted chant than the recorded version’s distressed yelp, and it felt like “Blank Tapes” may have crossed the line from ethereal into too laid-back — but they were played well regardless, and as some of the band’s best songs, really nice to hear. That subtle tension of “Label This Love” still hit, while the climax of “Paintings” resonated greatly across the audience.
Frontman Joey Vannucchi was bashful and genuine with a few words of gratitude for the crowd. His band departed towards the end, letting Vannucchi play stark, solo renditions of “ULS” and “Sunlight” to close out an overall pretty great hour-plus of From Indian Lakes’ fare, played with a workmanlike energy and informed musical craftsmanship.
Set list (7:38-8:55):
- Water
- Holy
- The Flow
- The Lines
- The Wilderness
- Hold Me Down
— - I Lay Different
- Spilling Over
- Shrine
- Keep Me
- Breaking My Bones
- Label This Love
- No One Else
- Dissonance
- Blank Tapes
- Sleeping Limbs
— - We Never Dream
- Paintings
— - ULS [solo]
- Sunlight [solo]